The board
The board is five by five: eight red circles, eight yellow triangles, eight green squares, and one gap. Tiles never leave the board and never change colour. All you ever do is slide tiles into the gap.
One tap is one move
Tap a tile that sits in the same row or column as the gap. The simplest case is the tile right beside it:
A long slide is still one move
This is the rule most new players miss. Tap a tile further along the gap's row or column and every tile between it and the gap slides together. Moving three tiles costs exactly what moving one tile costs. Nudging them across one at a time would cost three.
A tile that does not share a row or column with the gap cannot move at all. The gap decides what is possible, so watch where it is, and where each slide will leave it.
Building a pattern
Each round shows a pattern, such as this line of three:
Make those colours appear in that arrangement anywhere on the board and the round is done. There is no target zone. Here one slide down the gap's column finishes it:
The pattern has to match exactly as drawn. A row of red, yellow, green does not count if yours reads green, yellow, red, and it does not count turned on its side as a column. Shapes are never rotated or mirrored.
Five patterns, one board
A run is five rounds. The board is not reset between them: round two starts from wherever round one left the tiles. The small Next preview shows the pattern that is coming, so you can see what the following round will want.
Par and your score
Your score is your total moves across all five rounds. Par is the number of moves the server needed, playing each round the shortest way it could from where the last round ended. After a run you get one square per round: green if you matched or beat the par line for that round, gold if you were one or two over, red beyond that.
Undo is free. Sliding a tile straight back where it came from also cancels the move instead of costing a second one, as long as the round has not just been completed. So you can try a slide, look at the result, and take it back.
Play it again
Replays are unlimited and only your best run counts, on the result card and in your stats. A first attempt twenty over par is normal. The second one is usually half that. Par is there to be chased.
Where to start
Start with the easy run . Its patterns are three tiles, the first is a single slide away, and no round needs more than three moves. When the move counts stop surprising you, read how to use fewer moves.
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